Revenge
by Mind of the Childishly Naive
Summary: Gohan had been waiting for this opportunity.


-x-

Revenge

-x-

"Chi-chi... I don't know about this."

Goku tugged at the annoying collar of the new shirt Chi-chi had forced him into, looking skeptically at the mirror across the small dressing room. They'd been shopping all morning and Goku would have given anything to eat lunch. Chi-chi kept insisting that if he cooperated this would be the last place they stopped, so he couldn't exactly refuse...

That didn't mean he wasn't regretting it. The clothes were stiff and tight, and they crinkled, and they smelled like packing paper and _new_, and they just didn't have the same feeling of comfort that his fighting gear had.

"Oh, Goku, stop complaining," Chi-chi said from outside the door, burning the mental image of her standing there, hands on her hips, into Goku's mind, "I'm sure you look handsome, now come out here."

Goku hesitated, remembering all the times he'd laughed at Gohan when Chi-chi had paraded him around in the silly outfits she liked so much when he was a kid. Gohan was old enough, now, to pick his own clothes out without his mother fussing, but Goku wondered if his son remembered all the times he didn't brave Chi-chi's wrath to save him.

Surely Gohan was past that...

"Oh, _see?"_ Chi-chi asked when he tentatively stepped out of the dressing room, still pulling at the collar. The smile on her face almost made it worth the discomfort and Goku smiled a little in return. "You _do_ look nice, Goku, I told you. Gohan, sweetie, what do you think? Doesn't your father look nice?"

Goku gulped.

The moment of truth.

He threw an apprehensive glance toward his son, unsure of whether or not the feeling was duly founded. It was hard to tell just by looking at his face. ...That smile could mean anything.

Gohan sat in a chair against the wall, among the growing pile of boxes and bags that Chi-chi had made them haul from store-to-store. At the enthusiastic prompting from his mother, he crossed his arms and smiled, though not in any particular way, and seemed to seriously contemplate the question as he looked at Goku.

His parents waited, eager and nervous, for him to speak.

"I dunno, Mom," Gohan finally said, frowning as though the clothes didn't seem like his father at all. Goku sighed with relief, but his soaring spirit careened into a pitiful downward spiral when Gohan added, "It looks all right, but the color seems off."

And then he did the one thing that Goku couldn't believe his son would do to him.

He purposely changed Chi-chi's mind-set from "wife" to "mother", with a single question.

"Is that yellow or orange?" Gohan asked, inclining his head, his black eyes and his voice full of an innocence that Goku suddenly realize he no longer possessed.

Chi-chi frowned at this information, then crossed her owns arm and scrutinized her husband. The shirt was green. She threw an distressed, annoyed look at Gohan, but it wasn't him that she was annoyed with. Gohan's smile returned.

"You're just used to seeing him in that ratty orange thing," Chi-chi said, already gathering an arm-load of clothes she had at the ready. She shoved them into Goku's unwilling arms, and he groaned under the weight of them. "Try these on, Goku. He needs to see you in something different! I've told you to start wearing nicer clothes; what if you've ruined Gohan's ability to distinguish colors properly or something? _Any _kind of over-exposure is bad for a growing boy's mind, I've _told_ you that.

"Why do you think I balance his school work out so evenly? I don't do it for fun, you know."

Goku gaped, mortified, at Gohan as Chi-chi shoved him back into the dressing room, brutalizing him about how "Gohan had learned his colors so _quickly_ as a baby," and "What if I have to teach him all over again? This could set him back years!". Gohan raised a hand and grinned at his father just before Chi-chi pulled the door closed.

"Take you time, Dad."

Goku felt the painful, unfamiliar sting of betrayal.

-x-

(A/n) *laughs manically because Gohan won't* He did it just to be mean, I guess. =3

-Motcn


End file.
